Installing Elixir in your local machine

Sun, Jul 4, 2021 2 min read

Use the asdf as a version manager to install Elixir on your local computer.

The first thing you need to start hacking with Elixir is … well … erm … Elixir 😏.

If you want to install it on your local machine, there are plenty of options. You can see them in the Elixir docs.

I prefer to use a version manager, similar to rvm or nvm.

Because of Elixir, I came across asdf, and it is awesome 🤯.

It’s the last version manager you will ever need.

That’s because you use the same version manager for different languages. You usually will also need node.js installed anyways. Or even a Postgres database.

You can set up everything in one place. And you can even have different versions installed and have a .tool_versions file specifying which versions are used when you are inside a directory.

To install it, just follow the instructions. In my case, I’ll be installing in a Ubuntu machine, but the steps are pretty similar for Mac, except for installing the required dependencies.

Install git

$ sudo apt install curl git

Clone the asdf repo

$ git clone https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf.git ~/.asdf
$ cd ~/.asdf
$ git checkout "$(git describe --abbrev=0 --tags)"

Add to your shell

In my case to .zshrc, append the following line:

. $HOME/.asdf/asdf.sh

Enable completions

In .zshrc include the asdf plugin to enable completions:

plugins=(
  asdf
  git
)

Reload the shell

$ source ~/.zshrc

Install Erlang

You have a list of available plugins, with instructions on installing required dependencies for a specific language.

For Elixir you will need to install Erlang first. First, you install the required system dependencies for Erlang to work:

$ sudo apt-get -y install build-essential autoconf m4 libncurses5-dev libwxgtk3.0-gtk3-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libpng-dev libssh-dev unixodbc-dev xsltproc fop libxml2-utils libncurses-dev openjdk-11-jdk

Then you install the plugin:

$ asdf plugin add erlang

Now you can query for all available versions you can install:

$ asdf list-all erlang

Pick the latest or a previous one:

$ asdf install erlang 24.0.2

Then you can set it as the global version used in your system:

$ asdf global erlang 24.0.2

Or inside a directory, mark a specific version inside it:

$ asdf local erlang 24.0.2

Install Elixir

The steps are pretty similar to erlang, as with any other language.

You don’t need to install any additional system dependency, so you first add the plugin.

$ asdf plugin add elixir

Now you can query for all available versions:

$ asdf list-all elixir

Pick the latest:

$ asdf install elixir 1.12.1